


The Intimacy of Brushing Hair

by TheCrowMaiden



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Apologies, Communication, Declarations Of Love, Flashbacks, Hair Braiding, Hair Brushing, Jon and bonding with people playing with his hair, Light Angst, M/M, Martin and Jon actually have a conversation about the slap(s), post episode 174
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25101730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCrowMaiden/pseuds/TheCrowMaiden
Summary: Martin offers to do Jon's hair as a way to broach a difficult conversation, and Jon ends up remembering all the other times people have done his hair for him.
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker
Comments: 33
Kudos: 255





	The Intimacy of Brushing Hair

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a "5 times and 1 time" idea, turned into angst and proper communication about the slapping that happened in 169 and 172. Also I just needed them to cuddle after 174. I almost didn't post it, but here we are!

“…Can we sit down?”

Jon looks over at Martin in immediate concern, stuttering to a halt in the gritty wasteland at the sound of his voice. Their time since leaving the realm of the Vast had been spent in silence apart from the unavoidable sounds of their passage. Jon’s sure he’s memorized every clink of their bags at this point, due to how little other noise there is. Worse yet, Martin won’t look at him after asking the suspiciously flat question. Unease tugs at Jon’s spine and he chews on his lip.

It’s not that it’s a bad place to stop—in fact it’s probably one of the better places to do so. As far as Jon can see it’s just more of the endless dirt and rocks that seem to populate the areas not directly under an Avatar’s thumb. The sky is vaguely grey, just light enough to differentiate it from the ground. The rocks aren’t jagged. There’s even a breeze free of screams; the wind carrying nothing but the smell of dust.

So it’s not where they are that has Jon’s skin prickling with discomfort, it’s the _why._

“O-of course, but, I mean…Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah fine.”

Martin’s face is closed off and he’s almost radiating anxiety. He walks a few paces to the left of where they are and sits down with his back to one of the rocks, pulling his bag off. Jon remains standing as Martin begins to dig through it, awkwardly shuffling his feet as he watches. Neither of them say anything as Martin sorts through all the things he had thoughtfully packed while waiting for Jon to make a decision after the world ended, and Jon is almost ready to—carefully—ask what’s going on when Martin pulls out a hairbrush.

It’s from the cabin and, appropriately, painted with daisies. They’d laughed about that when they first found it. Jon has barely processed that thought when a green cotton strip emerges from the bag too and his stomach does a little flip. There are in fact several of the strips, cut from the bottom of one of Martin’s t-shirts to make hairbands for Jon. The had spent an entire morning making them, Jon cutting them out and Martin proving remarkably capable with a needle and thread as he finished the edges. The shortened t-shirt had been stolen by Jon immediately after for a pyjama top; it’s in his bag right now, and his heart clenches at the thought.

“Your hair’s been a mess since the…since all the wind.” Martin still isn’t really looking at Jon, but he pats the ground in front of him in a gentle enough way. “I thought I could fix it for you. So…so you can see better?”

After a moment’s hesitation Jon sits down with his back to Martin, dropping his bag off to the side. He’s still not sure what’s going on but at least this way Martin won’t be able to see Jon struggling with his emotions—if he looks at him at all. Jon pulls up his knees, and unconsciously holds his breath as Martin picks up the brush.

And it rushes out of him in an instant when Martin pulls the half-broken tie from Jon’s hair.

Because Jon is suddenly drowning in memories of other hands in his hair at so many other times in a time before he ruined everything. The bristles of the brush scrape through the tangles and Jon has to grit his teeth not to break down over the sepia-toned past that’s rising over him as inexorably as static.

_~_

_“Christ, boss, you look terrible!” Tim exclaims, as Jon comes in from a windstorm that has turned him into the dictionary definition of ‘dishevelled’. He throws an arm around Jon’s shoulders and grabs Sasha’s hand with the other, slipping one of the elastics off her wrist. Both of the assistants laugh as Tim gathers Jon’s hair into the messiest approximation of a ponytail possible._

_Jon tries to glare them into silence but they just keep laughing, until Sasha steers Jon into his office and pulls a handful of pins from somewhere as she sits him down in his chair. Tim offers his comb with a wink, and between them they wrestle Jon and his hair into submission. Jon can’t hold his scowl by the end, especially with the two of them presenting him a mirror like they’re in the fanciest of barbershops as they show him the results—a neat, professional bun._

_If Jon copies it for the next day when he comes in, it’s just practical._

~

_Georgie hums as she neatly separates Jon’s hair into a half-up style, running her brush through more times than necessary to get it smooth. The Admiral purrs in his lap, smugly content that they’re not the one Georgie is grooming. Two cups of cocoa sit on the table and the telly is droning on with some documentary that neither of them care enough about to argue over its accuracy. Her fingers are gentle and quick as she ties off his hair and pats his shoulder._

_“There! Now you don’t look like a horror movie knock-off.”_

_“I rather think it was more than my hair that caused that.”_

_Georgie’s eyes go soft and she sighs once before she bonks Jon on the head with the brush. It’s just a tap, but it makes him look up with a muffled noise of protest all the same. She just wags her finger at him like she does when she’s scolding the Admiral, a smile on her face._

_“None of that! Now move over; you’re hogging the couch.”_

_~_

_The tutorial she’s pulled up on his laptop is the simplest one she can find, but Daisy still frowns at it as she forces her trembling fingers to sort Jon’s hair into three sections._

_It had been her idea to work on her motor skills by braiding his far-too-long hair for him, and Jon wasn’t about to say no. He’d had to help by combing out the tangles himself, and with anyone but Daisy he’d be embarrassed by how long it took him to do so. The comb was also missing several teeth by the end, and Jon wondered if he should pick up a brush for next time._

_“I’m starting now.” Daisy breaks Jon from his thoughts with a poke to his shoulder. “Try not to move.”_

_She has her knees against Jon’s back, supporting her elbows on her thighs as she slowly braids. It’s not comfortable, but it’s not the worst. After a while the pressure even becomes soothing, and Jon has to focus on keeping still. He wants nothing more than to relax into the contact and the little tugs against his scalp as Daisy works._

_By the time she finishes she’s breathing hard from the effort, and Jon lets her prop herself up on his shoulders for a few minutes until he hesitantly clears his throat._

_“Do…Do you want me to brush yours?”_

_Daisy’s startled expression flits briefly into one of cautious happiness before she closes her eyes, and she nods._

_“Yeah.”_

_~_

_Tim tugging on a stray lock that’s escaped his bun, Sasha offering him an elastic, Martin red-faced and stammering as he quickly tucks one of Jon’s bobby pins in, Basira on the boat, Daisy in his office, Georgie at her flat, Martin a hundred times in the cabin as he told him about everything and nothing—_

_~_

“—And I should have thought of a better way to bring it up than this, but you know me.”

The brush is resting on Jon’s knee, and Martin is talking to him in the now that smells of ash and nothingness. It’s just the two of them, the others gone in one way or another a long time ago. Gone because of Jon. His head feels overfull and he tries to focus on Martin’s words, breathing as silently as he can as his eyes burn. Martin is finishing with the hairband, settling the cotton in place as his fingers smooth the flyaways down, when his voice breaks—and Jon finally hears him.

“I’m…I’m just _sorry._ I realized that, god I just, the only contact I’ve initiated with you recently was _slapping_ you.”

Oh.

Shit.

Jon freezes, coming back to himself with the force of dropping out of the Vast. The tears that had been building behind his eyes freeze too, and Jon has to force himself not to blink. If he blinks, the ice will break and send them pouring out with an inevitability that might wash him away. He needs to be present. The past is gone.

With a small breath he digs his nails into his burn-scarred palm, both to clear his head and to keep himself from reaching up to touch his face. It hadn’t really hurt, not physically, when Martin had hit him. Even if it had…stung a little, it was practical. They were under a lot of stress, and Jon had needed to be brought back to whatever was left of reality. It was reasonable, what Martin had done. Jon understood.

But none of those sentences seem able to make it past the lump in his throat, and Martin keeps talking.

“It wasn’t right, Jon. It wasn’t right and I’m sorry.” Martin’s voice is wobbling with every word, audibly thick with tears. “Do you remember the cabin? You stuck your cold feet under me on the couch when I was having a crisis about touching you, we fell asleep together reading that awful novel, and, and you moved your chair next to the stove to hold my hand while I was cooking dinner because your leg hurt but I was having a bad day and out of all the things I could have done to stop you doing a statement I _slapped you._ ”

“M-Martin, it’s—”

“It’s not okay, Jon! Don’t you dare say it’s okay!”

Martin’s hands come up to cup Jon’s cheeks, cradling them gently, and they’re shaking so much that Jon’s stubble rasps against them. When Martin drops his forehead down to rest against the top of Jon’s head, it becomes clear that the tremors are running through his whole body. Somehow Martin manages to laugh all the same, a wavering little chuckle of self-loathing that twists in the air. It’s cold.

“I can’t even say this to your face because of how badly I want to just not have this conversation, how much I want to just ignore it.”

Tears are starting to dampen Jon’s scalp and he reaches up to cover Martin’s hands with his own. His hair flutters with Martin’s wavering words spoken into it. He’s starting to tremble too, a nervous vibration crawling across his skin, and he’s not sure if it’s because of Martin or his own emotions. His thumb twitches in an attempt at comfort, and Martin’s breath hitches. There’s a long pause that not even the broken physics of the world can make shorter.

“But I…Jon, I love you. I love you and you deserve better than that.”

They must make a picture, Jon thinks, holding back his own tears more fiercely than ever. Two people covered in who-knows-what having an intense and emotional conversation in the middle of the apocalyptic landscape—neither of them facing each other and one with a grimy, but clearly still floral-pattered, hairbrush in their lap. He chafes Martin's cold hands tentatively, running over his thoughts like he once ran his tongue over a chipped tooth. There are a lot of things he wants to say to comfort Martin, assure him it’s really not that bad, that Jon isn’t angry. There are a lot of nice, simple things like that. He even means them. But what comes out is—

“I didn’t like it.”

Martin stiffens at the firm but choked statement and tries to drop his hands from Jon’s cheeks, like he’s unsure he should still be touching him—which is _nonsense_. But Jon doesn’t trust his voice to get that out without sounding dismissive, so he shoves Martin’s hands back in place so hard that he accidentally squishes his own face instead. His words come out a little muffled when he speaks next, but the tone is right so he’ll count it as a win.

“I mean, I didn’t like it, but I _understood_ why you slapped me. I did. I-I do. I don’t blame you for doing it, Martin. I just, well, I’d rather you didn’t again.”

“Yes, god, of course.” Martin presses his nose more firmly into Jon’s hair, his glasses digging in the slightest bit. “That’s the whole point I was…badly trying to make. I’m not going to do it again; I promise.”

They breathe out in unison, and some of the tension eases away. Jon leans back into Martin’s familiar bulk with gentle insistence until Martin has to lift his face so that his chin is what’s resting on Jon’s head instead. His arms drop down to connect over Jon’s skinny shoulders in a loose embrace. Even with the change in position to something more akin to cuddling, Martin’s posture is still a bit stiff—so Jon stubbornly nestles even closer to him. He eventually manages to ease his way sideways into Martin’s lap, cheek against Martin’s comfortable chest and arms around his waist. It’s the closest they’ve been since the Lonely, and Jon refuses to care that Helen is most likely going into delighted, spirally hysterics somewhere.

When he finally pulls away enough to look up, Martin is crying again, tears carving clear tracks through the dirt on his cheeks. One of Jon’s hairs is caught in the frame of his glasses, and the lenses are horribly smudged from being against Jon’s apocalyptically greasy scalp. In short, Martin looks a mess—but he looks hopeful, and Jon finds a smile for him. It isn’t even hard.

“I still love you, Martin.”

Jon gets a huff for that, Martin finally relaxing against him. It’s a proper cuddle now, the kind that Jon had rather transparently instigated as often as possible once he realized he could. Martin is even absently rubbing circles into Jon’s back when he glances down at him with a chagrined little smile.

“Yeah, but I don’t know if you _should_.”

It’s a weak joke, and Jon rolls his eyes. But he also lifts his chin to brush a kiss against Martin’s neck so that it’s clearly a _fond_ eye roll.

“Hm. Lucky for us I know more than you, then.”

That gets a real laugh from Martin, albeit a slightly teary one, and Jon smiles a little wider. For a brief moment they’re back on the cramped couch in Daisy’s cabin again, laughing over a secondhand book they bought to while away the evening hours. Jon’s chest warms, and when the dark of the broken world presses back in, the warmth doesn’t fade. Because even now, they still love each other.

No matter how far away they get from the cabin, from normal, from everything else, their love _will_ come with them.

And they’ll never, ever leave it behind.


End file.
